The Basics: Gentle elephant Horton hears a sound coming from a dust speck. The sound turns out to be an entire world of tiny people called Whos. None of Horton's jungle friends believe that the tiny people exist and want the dust speck boiled in oil to teach him a lesson. But all I kept wondering while watching it was whether these Whos were the same Whos that the Grinch was out to get. If they were, then that means that (a) the Grinch is also a tiny Who and (b) these people seem to have a lot of enemies and (c) the movie wasn't interesting enough to keep my mind from wandering.

What's the Deal? There's nothing terribly wrong with it (unless you can't deal with Carrey on any level; he's somewhat muted here but not nearly enough to stop his supremely irritating Robin Williams-level "riffing"), but there's nothing mind-blowingly amazing about it, either. The story takes a backseat to the incredible, Seuss-faithful animation, and it's not nearly as funny as you'd hope. But the kids will dig it.

Something to Love and Something to Hate: Again, the animation is perfect. And there's a clever bit showing old-school Seuss illustrations as the stuff of Horton's imagination. I also liked the shout-out to Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose. But whose decision was it to shoehorn a dumb anime sequence into it? And worse, which Studio Who decided that all the characters should break into a chorus of REO Speedwagon's "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" in the final act? If you can't resurrect the guy who voiced Tony the Tiger to sing your song, then you don't need a song.

Better Than: The live-action versions of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat. Like that's so hard.

Not Better Than: The 1970 Chuck Jones TV version of Horton. Also The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, still one of the weirdest, coolest kid movies ever.

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